Best Kept Secret (Rochester Trilogy 3)

“What are you going to say?” Jane’s dark eyes come back to mine and she tugs the sheet up higher on her chest. I want to pull it off her, expose all her skin and lick my way down and write the only thing that matters on her skin. Y O U C A M E B A C K. “Are you going to stand up for Emily?”

Another wave of guilt comes in. Another. Another. They’re ceaseless. “I owe her that much. I should have done it years ago, and I didn’t.”

Jane searches my face. “What would you have done? Run away with her?”

I considered it. Of course I did. After the night she came to me, after I fucked her to get revenge on Rhys, I went over a hundred different scenarios in my mind. Showing up at Coach House and dragging her out of there. Meeting her at an old dock on the beach. A runaway boat. A runaway train. But the thing about running is that eventually you have to stop. You can’t outrun the past forever. It always catches up.

“Something different from what I did,” I say finally. “Something other than turn my back on her. I always told myself I ran out of time, because Paige was born and the years went by.”

“But you didn’t run out of time,” Jane says softly. “You could still…be with her. If you wanted it.”

No. I don’t want it. My heart knows first, body a second later. There’s no going back with me and Emily. Hell, we might not have made it in the first place. What I felt for her was a teenage obsession. Everything seems fated in high school. Every emotion is heightened by raging hormones and, in my case, competition with Rhys. He hated that I was with Emily and that made me want her more. He’s dead now. It doesn’t feel like a victory. He was a piece of shit, bad for Emily and bad for Paige, but I didn’t want her to lose her dad. Of all the things I planned, I never thought of outliving him and swooping in to take his place. I’ve always wanted my own place. Away from his shadow. Away from all of his cruelty and his dark obsession.

“You know what I felt when I saw Emily today?”

Jane shakes her head, wordless.

“Pity.”

She lets out a breath. I’m not sure she knew she was holding it.

“I felt bad for her. This situation with Paige, and hiding out, and running after you to Houston in some desperate attempt to ask for help—it’s fucked up. It’s not what she ever wanted out of her life. She wanted a rich husband and a nice house and peace, and the world handed her a brother who didn’t want to let her have it and a husband who didn’t care. The place doesn’t even have heat.”

“What?”

“It’s a summer cabin. Not meant for the winter.” I can’t go back and intervene on Emily’s behalf. Never straighten things out between the two of us. And maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe it never worked out with Emily because I was supposed to meet Jane Mendoza instead. I don’t believe in destiny or any of that bullshit. I don’t even believe it’s in Jane’s best interest to have met me, but I did, and now I have to do something about it. About her, about Emily, about our tangled lives. “I felt responsible. But I didn’t feel anything else.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

I shift myself over her, and Jane spreads her legs to make room for me. I’m not good for her. Not good enough to bend my head and kiss her collarbone. Not good enough to lick away the imprint of my lips. Not good at all. But I can’t stop myself. I’ve tried. I’ve tried not to feel this way, I’ve tried not to want her, and it doesn’t work. “You think I still want her? Is that it? You think I went there today with the past on my mind?”

I’m kissing up the side of her neck and so I can’t see Jane’s face when she answers. “Maybe,” she breathes. “Maybe.”

“I could only think about you. Damn it, Jane. I wanted to walk out of that shitty house as soon as I walked in the door.”

I wanted to come back here and be with her, and that’s the part I can’t say. It’s like choking on a mouthful of seawater. I wanted to come back to this place with the certainty of Jane tucked in my pocket. I can’t ever send her away again. But if she wants to leave, if she wants her own life away from the wreckage of mine, how could I keep her prisoner here? I couldn’t. There’s a real possibility she could drown in the weight of all these secrets and all this pain. Who would want to stay for this? For this negotiation with Emily about Paige, and for me, the man who couldn’t protect any of them from anything?